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Category: Copyright

Cross words about copyright and today’s Irish Times simplex crossword

21 May, 201621 May, 2016
| No Comments
| Copyright, Grading and Marking

Copyright CrosswordMy dad’s voice comes from the other room, asking “document granting exclusive right to publish?”, adding that “it’s in nine letters”. It turns out that this is the clue for nineteen down in today’s today’s Irish Times simplex crossword. It also turns out that the answer is “copyright”. I had spent at least a quarter of an hour assuring him that the answer couldn’t possibly be “copyright”, because copyright automatically vests if the work is original, and no additional grant of copyright, or document granting an exclusive right to publish, is necessary. As the Patents Office explains “the act of creating a work also creates the copyright, which then subsists in the physical expression of the work”. To the extent that there is anywhere a document granting a right to publish, the closest is an imprimatur, but that didn’t fit. And somebody who holds a copyright in a work can license its use to someone else, and can even licence its exclusive use to someone else, but “licence” didn’t fit either (and anyway, licences are permissions to do lots of things, like drive a car, use a television, or keep a dog; they are not confined to publications or copyrights; and they don’t have to be written documents).…

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Memory in a Digital Age: Collecting, Accessing and Forgetting

12 April, 201630 April, 2020
| No Comments
| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Copyright, Digital deposit

Trinity Week 'Memory' banner, via tcd.ie

This is Trinity Week in Trinity College Dublin. The cricket pitch is beginning to look green; the cherry blossom is beginning to come into bloom; and Front Square is beginning to fill up with tourists. Trinity Week commenced yesterday on Trinity Monday, when we celebrated the announcement of the new Honorary Fellows, Fellows, and Scholars of the College. This is followed by a week of events including symposia, lectures, roundtable discussions and many other events, all of which will be of interest to the general public as well as to members of College and academics from other institutions. This year, the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences is hosting the programme of events for Trinity Week. The theme for the week is “Memory”, and the week long programme will include exciting events which demonstrate the key role memory plays in the teaching and research in the Faculty. There is more information here, the brochure may be downloaded here, and the events are live-tweeted here.

On Thursday next, 14 April, from 9:00am until 1:30pm, the School of Law (as one of the Schools in the Faculty) is co-hosting a half-day seminar on

Memory in a Digital Age: Collecting, Accessing and Forgetting.

…

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Copyright reform gets a welcome Christmas present

22 December, 201515 June, 2016
| 2 Comments
| Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13

Harp and copyrightModernising Copyright, the Report of the Copyright Review Committee [CRC], was published in October 2013. It contained an extensive draft Copyright and Related Rights (Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2013 to implement its recommendations. Senator Seán Barrett has now introduced a Private Member’s Bill into the Seanad to enact that draft Bill. Entitled the Copyright and Related Rights (Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015, leave to introduce it was granted on Wednesday, 2 December 2015; and the Bill itself was published this morning.

The text is the same as that of the CRC’s draft Bill, except in four respects. …

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The present of copyright – where are we now with copyright reform?

23 November, 201522 December, 2015
| No Comments
| Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13

cIn advance of tomorrow’s event on the future of copyright, I thought I’d write a few words about where we are now with copyright reform in Ireland and the EU. The twin legislative bases for Irish copyright law date from the turn of the millennium: the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 (also here) and the EU Copyright Directive (Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society; the InfoSoc Directive). In Modernising Copyright, in October 2013, the Copyright Review Committee recommended various changes to the 2000 Act to adapt it better for the digital age. The EU Commission is moving towards making recommendations with a similar aim.

In January 2012, the EU Commission began a consultation process on reform of the InfoSoc Directive (SEC(2011) 1640 final) (11 January 2012). In parallel, it considered copyright licensing, intermediary responsibilities (notice and action) and private copying levies (pdf). Although the probable conclusions of the consultation process were leaked in 2014, they were never formally published. Among their number seems to have been a recommendation that the exceptions to and limitations on copyright provided by the InfoSoc Directive should be harmonized at a European level, so that every state should provide for the same exhaustive exceptions and limitations.…

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The future of copyright

18 November, 201518 November, 2015
| 1 Comment
| Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13

cTHE FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT

Tuesday, 24 November 2015 – 18:00 to 19:30

FREE – PLEASE REGISTER

Paccar Theatre, Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin.

Digitisation of creative works and exponential growth of web-based communications have made the enjoyment of music, films, books, TV and much more, almost ubiquitous. Alongside this, fast internet and the increasingly wide use of smartphones and portable devices has enabled users to exchange and easily share these files. Yet, the body of law that has traditionally aimed to ensure an economic incentive and reward to content creators and producers – broadly defined – has suffered for more than fifteen years from an identity crisis.

Join me in conversation with my Trinity colleague Giuseppe Mazziotti in a discussion around the commercial, technological, cultural and societal implications of the current review of the copyright framework undertaken in the context of the EU Digital Agenda, where European policy makers are seeking to ensure a more effective, uniform and acceptable definition of copyright’s scope and of its online enforcement techniques [see COM(2015) 192 final (pdf)].

The occasion for this talk is the publication by the European Parliament of a Review of the EU copyright framework [available here; pdf] which was co-authored by Giuseppe Mazziotti.…

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How the blockchain could unblock the resale of digital goods

3 November, 20154 December, 2015
| 3 Comments
| Copyright

BitCoin and Music Staff (both via pixabay) and Movie Download (by evolutionxbox on deviantart)This week’s Economist is uncharacteristically effusive about the blockchain. On the cover, it calls it “The Trust Machine”, and says that it is a technology that “could change the world”.

In a lead article, it explains that the

blockchain lets people who have no particular confidence in each other collaborate without having to go through a neutral central authority. Simply put, it is a machine for creating trust. … it is a shared, trusted, public ledger that everyone can inspect, but which no single user controls.

The decentralized cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is the context in which the first blockchain has been developed. That blockchain keeps a continuous, almost real-time, track of currency transactions, and prevents double-spending. Although this is one use to which the blockchain concept can be put, the Economist emphasizes that there are countless other applications:

One idea, for example is to make cheap, tamper-proof public databases … [such as] registers of the ownership of luxury goods or works or art.

Just as I don’t have to understand the workings of the internal combustion engine to drive a car or take a bus, or understand the workings of a processor to use a laptop or a smartphone, I don’t have to understand the workings of the cryptography at the heart of the blockchain to spend a bitcoin or confirm the ownership of a good.…

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Privacy Paradigm – Towards a Creative Commons for Privacy

3 March, 201524 November, 2015
| 2 Comments
| Copyright, Privacy

Privacy ParadigmI’ve recently given two presentations about the internet and privacy, the first a fortnight ago in UCD at the Student Legal Convention, and the second last week in WIT. My theme, both times, was the decline of privacy online, and what we can do about it, not only from regulation by Data Protection Commissioners to individual court cases, but also from protecting our own privacy to respecting the privacy of others. In the latter context, I called for a Creative Commons for Privacy and I suggested that it might be called Privacy Paradigm (but if you have a better idea, please let me know). In this post, I want to tease out what a Privacy Paradigm, a Creative Commons for Privacy, might look like and what it could do.

If the analogy is to Creative Commons, the first question must be: what does Creative Commons do? Have a look at the column on the right, and scroll down a bit to the box headed “Licence”. You’ll see a badge with three icons and some short-hand; and you’ll see accompanying text which explains that this blog is “licensed under a Creative Commons … License”. By these means, I signal not only that you may re-use my content, but also the conditions under which you may do so.…

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Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015 – IV – Staff, Pensions, Innovation and IP

6 February, 201525 February, 2021
| 5 Comments
| Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13, Universities

Wishing HandThis is the fourth and final post in a series on Senator Seán Barrett‘s Private Members’ Bill, the Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015, which was discussed last week in the Seanad (earlier posts are here, here and here).

Section 7 of the Bill relates to some staff issues. In particular, section 7(1)-(2) would have solved some of the problems associated with the interpretation of section 25(8)(b) of the Universities Act, 1997 (also here) in the Supreme Court in Fanning v UCC [2005] IEHC 264 (24 June 2005), aff’d [2008] IESC 59 (28 October 2008).…

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Welcome

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Hi there! Thanks for dropping by. I’m Eoin O’Dell, and this is my blog: Cearta.ie – the Irish for rights.


“Cearta” really is the Irish word for rights, so the title provides a good sense of the scope of this blog.

In general, I write here about private law, free speech, and cyber law; and, in particular, I write about Irish law and education policy.


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